


Not Every Trilogy

by Ekatarinabeisel76



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Disney, Disney AU, M/M, Slash, mulan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 02:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ekatarinabeisel76/pseuds/Ekatarinabeisel76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gandalf heads to the home of Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took after Thorin and the High Council charge him with finding a dwarf-burglar, and Bilbo is faced with the harrowing choice of letting his frail, ill father take up the quest, or going himself to help the dwarves of Durin's line reclaim Erebor from an invading orc army.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for any errors, but it's past midinight and I need to sleep. I know this chapter is shorter than the ones in A Most Unsuitable Match, but that may be subject to change anyway, or it might just mean that the updates will come faster. I don't know yet - we'll see. Also, it might turn out to be more than five chapters, at this point everything's pretty flexible.

“You must be joking.” Bungo said, still dumbstruck by what the wizard had suggested.

The sitting room remained dead quiet save for crackling of the logs on the roaring fire, which were still blazing heartily and bathing the hearth in warmth even after so many hours of being lit, and casting an eerie glow across faces and walls that had only moments ago been merry. 

“Bungo dear,” Belladonna broke in, anxious to defend her friend. It was only proper after all, as she was the one who had invited him in, and she was the one who had introduced him to her husband all those years ago at the wedding. It was the proper, hobbit-like thing to do, but it was also in Belladonna’s nature to mitigate conflict in her house. 

“Let Gandalf explain.” She said, though she really had no idea at all if that would help the situation.

“Yes, thank you Belladonna.” Gandalf replied rather testily, with a sideways glance at Mister Baggins. “I have been charged with the task of procuring a burglar for the expedition of Thorin Oakenshield, the aim of which is to reclaim Erebor. I was wondering if you know anyone in the shire that might be suitable for the task?”

“I have heard of this quest.” Bungo said after clearing his throat. “Though, I thought it had to be a dwarf-burglar.” He eyed the wizard suspiciously as he took another long puff off his pipe.

His wife had strange friends indeed, even for a Took, and anything concerning dwarves or burglars separately was not something that he felt comfortable discussing in his home, much less the two together, as anything involving both dwarves and burglars was bound to be a sordid affair. 

“And it was only in the most unsavory corners of gossip that I heard it, mind you.” He added, and his glare seemed to sharpen, to flash even in the dim glow cast by the flickering flames licking at the grate.

“Bungo!” Belladonna admonished him sharply, raking him with a fierce gaze that Gandalf had never seen her affect before.

“I know of no such hobbit that would do for a burglar, and I certainly know of no hobbit that would pass for a dwarf!” He huffed haughtily, taking yet another drag off his pipe. He coughed loudly, several times, and the fit grew so out of control that he nearly dropped his pipe.

“Indeed,” he continued, after the bout had cleared up, “Only a Took would dare to dream of trying such a silly task.”

“Then do you know of any Tooks who would enjoy the opportunity to see new lands and meet new folk?” Gandalf asked.  
Belladonna looked as though she were about to interject, either on behalf of the wizard or her family, but Bungo plowed on straight through her words, dashing them like waves on seaside  
rocks.

“Fortinbras was just married, Adalgrim’s wife is pregnant with her third child, and both Flambard and Sigismund Took are far too sensible to even consider such folly.” Bungo prattled on, until his wife had finally had quite enough of his rambling.

“Then perhaps Bilbo might go!” She burst into the conversation like a flaming star, her cheeks aglow and her lips articulating the sounds with the accuracy and precision of an Elven archer.

“Bilbo?” Bungo asked incredulously. “Bilbo? His name is Bilbo Baggins, is it not? He is a Baggins of Bag End, and Bagginses do not go on adventures, they are not burglars, and they most certainly do not pose as dwarves!” He was almost shouting now, and it was the most angry he had felt in his entire life.

How could his wife even suggest that Bilbo, their precious, normal, only son Bilbo, go on a quest as a dwarf-burglar? She must be mad, he thought, or perhaps stricken with fever. Perhaps the wizard’s addled her brain somehow…He paused in his thoughts to stifle a fit of coughing, clasping his handkerchief to his mouth and iding the grizzly proof that stained the cloth as he pulled it away.

Gandalf jumped back into the conversation headfirst, knowing full well that this would be his only opportunity to head off the monstrous quarrel that has about to descend upon them. He’d had no idea how old wine and good leaf would affect Belladonna’s husband, and he was beginning to wonder if he should ever darken the doorstep of Bag End once more while the man lived. If Bungo Baggin’s icy glare was anything to judge by, Gandalf’s suspicions were as spot-on as Belldonna’s enunciation, if not grossly inadequate.

“Perhaps we might ask Bilbo if he wants to go?” Gandalf inquired firmly. Belladonna turned to him and nodded, but before she could rise from her seat by the hearth to go and summon her son, Bungo grabbed her hand.

“I forbid you to ask him!” he ordered.

“If you won’t let me ask him, then I shall go myself!” she retorted.

“On Old’s Took’s Pipe, you shall not!” Bungo said, throwing himself up from his chair to stand eye-to-eye with his wife, before turning to face the wretched wizard who had started the whole mess. After a fit of raucous coughing that wracked the entire room, he said, “I will sign the bloody contract and meet them by the road to Bree tomorrow morning, and you, Sir, shall go at once! They might have gotten their mountain stolen out from under them by a dragon and some orcs, but that does not mean that I shall give my son or my wife to their foolish, suicidal, quest.”

From the safety of the kitchen pantry, behind the closed door and the warm walls, Bilbo took in all of what he had just heard. His mind raced in time with his heart, which was beating at such a frantic rate that he thought it was liable to burst out of his chest. His father was ninety-five years old, and he had taken ill with a rather bad chest-cold of late, one that refused to leave him no matter what herbal teas The Gaffer instructed his mother to use. While he didn’t like the idea of posing as a dwarf and potentially burglarizing a perfectly respectable establishment – indeed he cringed at the very thought – letting either of his beleaguered parents take up the quest was hardly an option. 

And then, from under the crack, he heard his parents continue to argue, something about orcs, mountains, and a peculiarly named stone that he had never heard of before. He was about to go out and tell them to stop all of their fuss, that he would go, when the door to the pantry began to open from the outside.

Oh dear. If they caught him, there would be no doubt of what he was doing, no doubt that he had been eavesdropping on a private conversation between his parents and an old friend. He closed his eyes and tried to shrink into the wall behind him, and hoped very dearly that it was not his father who opened the door.

His hopes were answered – it was the wizard who entered the pantry and shut the door quietly behind him. He was tall, as tall as an oak tree by Bilbo’s reckoning, with a long beard, white hair, and tattered grey robes with a matching hat that he had tucked into his belt.

“Oh, sorry!” Bilbo stammered. “I was just…I was just er-“

“Hush!” Gandalf whispered to him as he crouched down until he was near eye-level with Bilbo. His eyes held a strange sense of urgency, but they also contained a peculiar fondness, and amusement even. They were dark and warm, bright and secretive. His lips were thin and nearly hidden by his mass of white grey hair, and he had a long, narrow face, which he insisted on pressing nearer and nearer to the hobbit. Bilbo certainly had no idea what to make of this towering stranger, but he found himself wishing that he would go way very, very soon - or at least stop getting so uncomfortably close to him in Old Took’s name!

“I know what you are doing Bilbo Baggins, and I assume that you heard everything that was just said?”  
Bilbo, taken aback and feeling slightly ill now, simply nodded. He didn’t trust himself with words, not with his back to the pantry wall, cornered by a wizard, and a sinking stone upending itself in his stomach, by the feel of it.

“Good. Have you made up your mind?” The wizard asked.

Bilbo nodded again, and the stone in his stomach seemed to double in size and weight as he did so.

“Very well then.” The wizard said, still using a firm tone, but his eyes seemed to glisten a little less urgently, and Bilbo found some comfort in that. “Meet me tomorrow morning at dawn, at the Brandywine Bridge, and we shall see what we can do to make you fitting dwarf-burglar. You are quiet enough, I suppose, as I did not hear you slip out, and you must have passed us to come here from your bedroom. Yes,” Gandalf seemed to be talking more to himself than to Bilbo at this point, but the Hobbit listened nonetheless as he continued, “the burglar shall not be a problem, but the dwarf – now there’s a separate matter entirely.”

“Yes.” Bilbo interjected, his curiosity getting the better of him once again. “How exactly do you plan to pass me off as a dwarf? I suppose it does not need to be said that I am a hobbit, and am therefore not quite as tall as a dwarf. Suppose they ask my name, or my lineage?” he inquired.

“We shall sort that out tomorrow, Bilbo Baggins. Where are you to meet me?” he asked, quizzing Bilbo.

“At the Brandywine Bridge, at dawn.”  
Gandalf nodded approvingly, and then, as he straightened up to his full, impressive height, Bilbo felt an unprecedented need to ask the question that had lurked on the edges of his mind ever since he the wizard had stepped into the pantry with him.

“Can you guarantee that I will come back?” he asked. He waited with baited breath, hoping for some form of comfort, something to still his racing heart.

“No.” Gandalf answered slowly. “I will tell you that, no matter in what shape you come back in from this journey, you will never be the same.”

“What if they find out that I’m not a dwarf, or a burglar even?” Bilbo demanded, his voice a faint whisper in the otherwise quiet pantry. “What will they do to me?”

Gandalf chose not to answer. Instead, with an slight, unnerving smile that seemed more like the ghost of a knowing smirk, Gandalf the Grey left Bag End, and went to his rooms at the Prancing Pony, where he told Thorin II Oakenshield that he had found them their burglar, and that he would meet them at the Brandywine bridge, just an hour past dawn the next morning.

Thorin hardly seemed pleased, let alone grateful, and Gandalf began to wonder if taking on the task of reclaiming Erebor had been such a good idea after all. He slipped into his bed wearily, wondering at a great many things as he heard the thirteen dwarves find their way to bed, until Thorin was the very last dwarf in the whole of Bree still awake, raking his eyes over the map that Gandalf had handed him previously.

Gandalf the Grey wondered at the nerve of Thorin Oakenshield, to have demanded championship of his quest from the High Council. He wondered at his own stupidity for taking up the cause himself, especially now as he listened to Thorin whisper heatedly and curse the runes that he could not read himself. Finally, He wondered at the mettle of Belladonna Took and Bungo Baggins, and pondered just what sort of stuff exactly, their son was made of, before drifting off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how well this is going... I have Bilbo pretending to be a dwarf with a fake beard, dressed in black leather (why does Gandalf have black leather pants anyway?), but this is probably going to be more than five chapters, because this is two and they aren't even out of the shire yet.  
> Someone. Help. Me.

The towering grandfather clock in the main hall struck five o’clock in the morning just as Bilbo opened his eyes to take in the sight of his familiar bedroom painted in shades of grey and blue in the heavy dark of the early morning yet to dawn over Hobbiton. He slid out of his comfortable feather bed, forsaking his warm pillows, bedding, and blanket for the drafty chill that seemed to invade the house after the magnificent row Gandalf’s proposition had given his parents just a few hours earlier. He padded across the room to his dresser, where he fetched a clean shirt, socks, and underwear before crossing the room once more to kneel in front of the heavy trunk stowed underneath his bed.

After pulling it free and trying his best to pry the lid up without waking his parents, Bilbo breathed a sigh of half-relief. The physically exhaustive part of his plan was done, leaving him with the task of orchestrating a silent escape and putting together a convincingly dwarven ensemble. He had stayed up long into the night, tossing and turning restlessly and gazing up at the ceiling dazedly, wondering what he might tell the dwarves. He had come up with a story that he thought was convincing enough, which was certainly not to say that he often let his imagination roam to such foolish ideas as how to pose as a dwarf, or that he was practiced in arranging words to form a convincing lies, but Bilbo had always been good at telling stories, and as he had lain in his bed wondering at his predicament he had come up with a story. As he rummaged around in the trunk, he assured himself that he was merely crafting a story, and not lying. He was not falsifying an official contract of the High Council of Middle Earth, and he was not abandoning all semblance of hobbit-like behavior and propriety. 

“It’s just a story.” He repeated firmly, just one more time, as if the added measure would be all he needed to convince himself that his rampant thoughts were the truth.

After slipping on his most travel-worthy clothes and cramming a large bag full of spare clothes, food, spices, and other various things that a hobbit cannot be deprived of, Bilbo still had one last task ahead of him before he could sneak out of Bag End and meet Gandalf at the Brandywine bridge. It was the part of the journey that he had most dreaded, ever since he had made up his mind to go. He couldn’t leave without the contract, otherwise all of his and Gandalf’s plotting would be in vain, but the mile-long parchment lay neatly rolled up on his father’s bedside table.

After a few moments of staring at his parent’s bedroom door in woeful, tense contemplation, Bilbo clenched his fists and puffed out his chest, and he tried to affect what he thought was a determined, brave look.

“If I am to play a burglar,” he said as he crept closer to the door, “I should start now.”

He pried the door open slowly, praying fervently to anyone who would listen that the hinges would not give him away. When he had finally gotten the door open wide enough for his body to pass through, very slowly - one foot and then the other, yes, that was it, just go slow, steady on now Bilbo - he found his mother and father still blissfully asleep. They were immersed deep within their own dreams, and did not stir at all as he crept forward towards his father’s bedside table, towards the scroll that seemed to glimmer in the early morning darkness. The moment his hand closed around the contract, Bilbo breathed a heavy sigh, and spun on his heel to leave his parent’s bedroom as quickly as his hobbit feet could carry him.

He repeated his story to himself as he slipped over the hills and down the winding dirty road that lead out of Hobbiton, and towards Brandywine bridge. When he arrived, breathing heavily, glancing at every slight movement with his eyes darting around frantically, Gandalf was already there. He stood tall in the emptiness of the morning, and as his presence swept over Bilbo, he seemed quietly, steadily, imposing. Indeed, he looked like a statue cut from solid stone, or perhaps a shadow. He stood completely still, until suddenly he snapped his head up to look at the approaching hobbit.

The kind smile and twinkling eyes that greeted him calmed Bilbo a little; he felt his heart slow just bit, and a small, weak voice in the back of his mind cried out that perhaps this folly game he was playing would not end in disaster.

“Ah! Bilbo, my boy! There you are!” he greeted him as he gave Bilbo a pensive once-over with his dark, quick eyes. 

“I’ve been thinking.” Bilbo started, but he wasn’t sure how to continue.

“That is generally what you do.” Gandalf supplied, not impatient but not very curious either.

“I can’t pass for a full dwarf, with my height, and er-“ he had no clue how to put his next thought tactfully, so he more than a little relieved when Gandalf interrupted him.

“Lack of facial hair?” Gandalf asked him. Bilbo nodded, and pressed on with his thoughts.

“I was thinking that perhaps we could tell them that I am only half-dwarf; my father was a dwarf from the Blue Mountains who met my mother, a hobbit, and decided to settle here. That would explain my height, and my…feet.” He said, holding his left foot up a few inches off the ground to indicate it.

Gandalf gave him a smile, which Bilbo took as approval. The wizard seemed impressed by his story, and Bilbo considered that a small victory.

“Yes, that would do, if Thorin Oakenshield would trust anyone who is not a full-blooded dwarf.” 

Bilbo’s heart dropped though his ribcage, plummeted past his stomach, and settled in his feet like a cold stone.

“Lucky for you, I am quite handy with magical tailoring. It’s one of my more secretive talents – Saruman has never approved of the skill.” Gandalf told him as he reached his hand into his long, grey cloak. 

After a few minutes of disgruntled rummaging, the wizard produced a bundle of heavy cloth of different colors and fabrics, and flung them at Bilbo. After some more searching, Gandalf found a pair of large, heavy boots, and threw them at the halfling’s feet.

“You’d better put those on quickly – dawn is fast approaching.” Gandalf told him, and turned his back so that Bilbo could change in piece.  
At the realization that the wizard actually did expect him to change in the middle of the forest right by the only bridge between the Shire and Bree, on the main road no less, Bilbo felt an angry throbbing in his temple and an anxious twinge in his stomach. He knew that there was no arguing with the wizard, powerful and unimaginably tall as he was, but this was not something a hobbit was supposed to do, much less a Baggins of Bag End.

And then, with a painful flash that struck his entire body, Bilbo remembered that after today, he was not a hobbit anymore. He remembered, with another searing pang, that his mother and father would wake up to an empty house, and he was doing it for them, for their wellbeing, for his frail mother and his ill father.

He fought back the tears welling behind his eyes, and shed his clothes off as best he could without anything to lean on for balance. Then he set his hands on what he thought were socks, at least, they looked like they were meant to go on his feet. Sliding the material over the sensitive skin and hair felt so very wrong, so very un-hobbit-like, and Bilbo suppressed a shudder as he realized that socks surely meant shoes. 

There was a pair of black leather pants that hugged his legs and clung to his skin, a plain, cotton undershirt that tucked into his pants and had baggy sleeves, a black woolen tunic that reached halfway down his thighs, a black leather vest, a leather belt fastened about his waist, woolen gloves and – by Old Took’s pipe was that a fake beard he saw on the bottom of the pile?  
“The boots too, Bilbo.” Gandalf said, giving him a knowing smile and then turning back to face the tree roots he had been studying so intently.

Bilbo cursed under his breath and bent over to pick up one of the heavy, constricting abominations. He had hoped that the wizard would not notice, though he knew better. As he slid his feet into them, Bilbo contemplated chucking them into the Brandywine River, wizard be damned.

“Alright then, I’m done.” He said reproachfully as he eyed the wizard’s back with a steady, icy glare.

He expected the old man to laugh. After all, he would if he ever saw a hobbit dressed in all black dwarven clothes, and with shoes on top of it! Instead, the wizard gave him a broad smile, and clasped him on the shoulder.

“Yes, you’ll make a fine dwarf, Bilbo Baggins.” Gandalf said, and then he paused to kneel so that he was at eye-level with the hobbit, and continued, “Or should I say Nara Jofr, son of Jrierun.”  
Bilbo grimaced, but somehow, a smile managed to burst through his melancholy. Perhaps this would not so terrible after all, he thought, perhaps he would come home to Bag End in a few weeks with endless new tales to tell and his parents wouldn’t be too upset with him. 

“Gandalf, I read the contract, but I still don’t quite understand the aim of this quest.” He said as he followed the wizard to stand by the bridge, where they were to wait for Thorin and his company to join them at any moment.

Gandalf kept his eyes cloaked under the wide brim of his ragged grey hat, and he spent a good deal of time formulating the best response to give the little hobbit. It pained him to think that he had gotten Belladonna’s son to go on such a dangerous quest, that he might have lured her son away to an end that he would never return from, and he loathed to see Bilbo’s expression when he did finally understand what we would face on the journey.

“Prince Thorin Oakenshield id the Prince of the Dwarf City of Erebor, which his father Thrain rules presently. The city has recently come under attack by orcs and goblins lead by Azog the Defiler, as well as a dragon called Smaug. Prince Thorin is trying to gather reinforcements from the High Council to give his father support, and they approved this quest.”

“Why exactly do they need a burglar then? Shouldn’t they hire a bombardier instead?” Bilbo asked, his pulse quickening as he waited for the answer that he knew he didn’t want to hear.

“The dwarves in the company are all accomplished fighters, to b sure, but Smaug will recognize the scent of any dwarf and thus any attempt to aid the Dwarves locked within Erebor will be easily thwarted. So we need a dwarf from outside of Erebor – a scent that the dragon won’t recognize.”

“So…” Bilbo began, trying to piece together all of the scraps of information swimming around in his mind. “You want me to sneak past a dragon to reclaim a dwarf city?”  
Gandalf nodded.

“A dragon?”

The wizard nodded once more, and Bilbo felt his stomach sink into his feet for the second time that day, and it just barely an hour after dawn rose over the shire. The golden sunlight streamed down and bathed the hills and hobbit holes in warm light, but Bilbo felt utterly cold, like a fish left to swim in a dark pool.

“Why won’t a real dwarf from the Blue Mountains do it?” The words spilled over his tongue and tumbled out of his mouth, he was in such a hurry to find another option.  
Gandalf grimaced, and his mouth set into a thin line before he replied, “Thorin’s grandfather, Thror, was not the most humble of kings. In short, he did not ingratiate himself and his folk to the dwarves of the Blue Mountains, in fact he insulted them on more than one occasion, so they will not offer their help.”

He wanted to turn around and head back home, to leave the wizard to his confounded quest and return to life as a Baggins of Bag End. He wanted to rip off the itchy fake beard strapped to his chin and throw away the boots trapping his feet. He moved one foot forward, he was poised to turn on his heel and leave and there was nothing he wanted to do more, but then he remembered his parent’s words from the night before. Then he remembered, once again, what had brought him to stand before the bridge and an approaching string of thirteen dwarves and one grossly tall wizard. He couldn’t let his frail father take on the quest, and there were no dwarves in the area who would take up the contract.

Just as he decided that he had no other choice, Bilbo looked up, and found one more reason that he should turn around go home. He looked up, hearing hoofs beat on the road ahead of them, and he saw the line of dwarves on ponies that Gandalf had been watching wordlessly while he toiled over his decision.

“Wizard.” A gruff voice barked from somewhere far above Bilbo’s head.  
He craned his head up to look at the speaker, and his eyes found what he could describe as a large, stout, rather handsome, sour-face, and overall very Princely dwarf. The dwarf had long, wild, black hair, with two braids on either side of his face, he had bright, vibrant eyes, and he seemed to have a scowl painted on his face between his thin lips, sharp nose, and wide forehead.

“Is this our burglar then?” he asked, staring down at Bilbo from atop his pony.

“Yes, this is Nara Jofr of the Blue Mountains, a thief and burglar.” Gandalf explained.

“He’s quite short.” Thorin analyzed him. Bilbo felt himself quake slightly as the Prince stared down at him, raking his eyes over every inch that and scrap of fabric that comprised Nara Jofr of the Blue Mountains. Finally, he tore his gaze away from the peculiarly short dwarf, and turned back to the other members of the company to call out, “But what else can we expect from a dwarf of the Blue Mountains, eh?”

Bilbo kept his eyes rooted to his cumbersome boots, and clenched his fist so hard that his fingernails dug angry red crescents into his palm. The company set off a few minutes later, and Bilbo sought distraction in petting his pony’s mane. It seemed that the mare was the only one aside from Gandalf who did not immediately reject him, and for that, he was more than grateful.

As they reached the top of a particularly high hill near the very edge of the Shire, Bilbo looked back towards Bag End, his home, towards his slumbering parents, and he wished once again that we was back home with them.


End file.
